Fallout 3 Crash Help

[The Invisible Goldfish]

My game of Fallout 3 crashes on start up. I realize this is something I should take up with Bethesda, but they have notoriously bad customer support. My game crashes during the sideshow of screens before the main menu appears. I have a Radeon 9800 graphics card and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor, service pack 2 for windows Vista, no mods installed (except the official ones), and I bought it on Steam. I'm dropping these threads all over the internet looking for help. Any ideas?

 

[Zantos]

Have you tried un-installing it and then re-installing? That usually fixes things. If it doesn't then get in touch with steam customer service, it could be that other people are also having this problem and they are working on a patch for it.

 

[vrbtny]

uhh.... It's Fallout.

You wouldn't get the proper Fallout 3 experience without the incredibly annoying crashes.

 

[The Invisible Goldfish]

Have you tried un-installing it and then re-installing? That usually fixes things. If it doesn't then get in touch with steam customer service, it could be that other people are also having this problem and they are working on a patch for it.

I've re-installed multiple times.

 

[Zantos]

Have you tried un-installing it and then re-installing? That usually fixes things. If it doesn't then get in touch with steam customer service, it could be that other people are also having this problem and they are working on a patch for it.

I've re-installed multiple times.

Get in touch with Steam customer service in that case, I think they have some sort of remote debugging system they can use, or check your logs, or something. They should at least be able to give you a list of common problems, it might just need a change of settings.

uhh.... It's Fallout.

You wouldn't get the proper Fallout 3 experience without the incredibly annoying crashes.

One day the people at Bethesda Softworks will go to hell, and their eternal punishment will be to have to actually live in a world with so many bugs.

 

[The Invisible Goldfish]

uhh.... It's Fallout.

You wouldn't get the proper Fallout 3 experience without the incredibly annoying crashes.

It won't actually start, so its less Fallout and more a $60 2 GB brick in my hard drive.

 

[Altorin]

If you just bought it, I really don't know what to tell you. I know that the game on the 360 seemed to get more and more unstable the further and further I went with it.

 

[Zaik]

My game of Fallout 3 crashes on start up. I realize this is something I should take up with Bethesda, but they have notoriously bad customer support. My game crashes during the sideshow of screens before the main menu appears. I have a Radeon 9800 graphics card and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor, service pack 2 for windows Vista, no mods installed (except the official ones), and I bought it on Steam. I'm dropping these threads all over the internet looking for help. Any ideas?

I hate to be that guy, but that's the bright red button in your post.

Also if you have less than 4 GB of RAM for Vista most recent video games will probably crash like that. You didn't mention it, so I thought I'd throw it out there.

 

[The Invisible Goldfish]

My game of Fallout 3 crashes on start up. I realize this is something I should take up with Bethesda, but they have notoriously bad customer support. My game crashes during the sideshow of screens before the main menu appears. I have a Radeon 9800 graphics card and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor, service pack 2 for windows Vista, no mods installed (except the official ones), and I bought it on Steam. I'm dropping these threads all over the internet looking for help. Any ideas?

I hate to be that guy, but that's the bright red button in your post.

Also if you have less than 4 GB of RAM for Vista most recent video games will probably crash like that. You didn't mention it, so I thought I'd throw it out there.

It's ran fine before, heck, I can run Vegas on it. Also, I have 18 GB free, so...yeah.

 

[therandombear]

My game of Fallout 3 crashes on start up. I realize this is something I should take up with Bethesda, but they have notoriously bad customer support. My game crashes during the sideshow of screens before the main menu appears. I have a Radeon 9800 graphics card and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor, service pack 2 for windows Vista, no mods installed (except the official ones), and I bought it on Steam. I'm dropping these threads all over the internet looking for help. Any ideas?

Try this: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1328904

FO3 kept crashing for me aswell, this works for me now, also, get the unofficial Fallout 3 patch, fixes startup crashes and such.

 

[Hungry Donner]

Is it Vista 64 bit? If I remember correctly Fallout 3 has problems with this set up and requires some manual edits to it's primary INI file (I know these are required for win7). I'd suggest checking Bethesda's forums [http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/forum/36-fallout-3-pc-issues/] to see if you can find a solution.

 

[Zaik]

My game of Fallout 3 crashes on start up. I realize this is something I should take up with Bethesda, but they have notoriously bad customer support. My game crashes during the sideshow of screens before the main menu appears. I have a Radeon 9800 graphics card and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor, service pack 2 for windows Vista, no mods installed (except the official ones), and I bought it on Steam. I'm dropping these threads all over the internet looking for help. Any ideas?

I hate to be that guy, but that's the bright red button in your post.

Also if you have less than 4 GB of RAM for Vista most recent video games will probably crash like that. You didn't mention it, so I thought I'd throw it out there.

It's ran fine before, heck, I can run Vegas on it. Also, I have 18 GB free, so...yeah.

Odd.

If New Vegas runs fine but 3 doesn't...well...hmm. The biggest difference between the two is going to be GFWL. That's known to suddenly crash pretty much anyone for any or no reason at any or every time with no warning or history, due to being a piece of shit.

Most people had issues the other way around though. Very strange.

Anyway, there was at least one mod that allowed you to remove GFWL from Fallout 3, you'd have to look it up on Fallout 3 Nexus.

 

[Gladion]

I guess there's about a billion threads like this on the internet and at least as many different solutions. Try to google your specific problem and see if anybody else has the exact problem as yours to narrow down the possibilities of solutions (I bet someone has). Check something like
Fallout 3 crash intro vista
or something.

Often, it has something to do with the audio and video codecs (download ffdshow and then DEACTIVATE the use of it for F3, somehow that solves many crashes), .netframework (for some stupid fucking reason F3 installs a BETA of the netframework, though I don't know if the Steam-version does so, too - least that wouldn't make any sense), you having to force the game to not check for QuadCore processors (see 3 posts before mine) or just plain specs. The Radeon 9800 may just not be suited for F3, even if you can run New Vegas on it.
Well, I got the game running on a P4 HT 2,8 GHz, GeForce 7900 GT and 3 gigs of RAM on XP. Shouldn't be a problem with your system. Incidently, check out Fallout3nexus.com . Actually a platform for mods, there are a lot of tweaks found there that are just made for increasing the game's performance and stability (like the 'fake window mode'). Maybe you'll get lucky there.

 

[vrbtny]

uhh.... It's Fallout.

You wouldn't get the proper Fallout 3 experience without the incredibly annoying crashes.

It won't actually start, so its less Fallout and more a $60 2 GB brick in my hard drive.

You payed $60 for it? Yeah, You're doing something wrong. I can get Fallout 3 plus all DLC for a tenner.

 

[Bostur]

My game of Fallout 3 crashes on start up. I realize this is something I should take up with Bethesda, but they have notoriously bad customer support. My game crashes during the sideshow of screens before the main menu appears. I have a Radeon 9800 graphics card and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor, service pack 2 for windows Vista, no mods installed (except the official ones), and I bought it on Steam. I'm dropping these threads all over the internet looking for help. Any ideas?

Try this: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1328904

FO3 kept crashing for me aswell, this works for me now, also, get the unofficial Fallout 3 patch, fixes startup crashes and such.

I had crashes on the early screens as well, and the solution in that thread fixed it completely.